


The Still Point

by Roses



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Gen, Introspection, Minor Character(s), POV First Person, Present Tense, Wordcount: Over 1.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-17
Updated: 2010-10-17
Packaged: 2017-10-12 17:55:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/127497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Roses/pseuds/Roses
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As a ship enters a mass effect relay, there are two and a half seconds when every system on the ship shuts down... and you're just hanging there among the stars. A short, first-person piece for Joker, reflecting on the Reapers, the mass effect relays, and the fate of galactic civilisation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Still Point

I pull the _Normandy_ around in a curve so tight it would have blown Einstein's frikking head off, and bring her up alongside the relay. I relax my grip on the controls, and take a breath--exactly the amount of time it takes for the mass effect field to power up around us. Then I ease off on the choke, slow and steady, right up until the point that I feel that little _snap_ in the throttle as the field pulls tight around us. Tight enough to slingshot the _Normandy_ halfway across the galaxy.

I keep my eyes on the layers of holograms scrolling in and out of my peripheral vision, exhale, and drop the engines.

As the _Normandy_ 's drive core hands over to the haemorrhage-inducing force of the mass effect field, there is this one moment when every system on the ship blinks out, everything goes dark, and you are just hanging there in the stars.

It lasts for two and a half seconds.

Every time.

After that, everything comes back online like nothing's happened, and you're wrenched thousands of light years along an outer spiral arm.

To me, and to every other pilot that's ever cut their teeth out at Jump Zero, it's the _still point_ , but the scientists back on Earth call it the _Mass Effect Engagement Interval_. I've heard that the asari call it _The Waiting_ , and that, according to the hanar, it's _The Eye of the Storm_.

It doesn't matter what words they use, none of them really understand it. No one has ever figured out what it is, or why it's there, or what causes every system from the AI Core to the engines to black out for two and a half seconds as a ship falls into a relay.

My whole life, ever since I took my first ship out to the Charon Relay, it's fascinated me. But not any more.

Not since I started working for Shepherd.

Since the attack on the Citadel, those two and a half seconds have been an itch that I can't get at--somewhere at the back of my brain.

Thinking too much pisses me off. It makes you miserable, gets you angry, or gets you dead, and so this this itch? It's starting to annoy the hell out of me.

Every time I bring a ship into a relay, it's right there, staring me in the face: the _still point_. Like a puzzle daring me to solve it.

I know why I'm doing this. This is because of Virmire. This is because of all those nights on the Citadel after the attack that I spent reading Shepherd's mission reports and drinking coffee when I should have been watching porn and jerking off.

I didn't just read hers, either--I read the reports that Alenko, Garrus, and everyone else submitted, too. I started imagining that I had seen it for myself, which is ridiculous, because everyone knows how the bridge of the _Normandy_ is the closest I'm ever going to get to front-line combat. Hell, I've had to fly better and faster than any other pilot in the Alliance to even get that close.

The point is that I spent too damned long reading through those files. Reading about how the Citadel, the mass relays, and every other significant piece of technology in the galaxy was built by the Reapers.

" _Your civilisation is based on the technology of the Mass Relays. Our technology. By using it, your society develops along the paths we desire._ "

I still read her reports, too. The one's she writes for Cerberus.

She says that Legion told her:

" _Technology is not a straight line. There are many paths to the same end. Accepting another's path blinds you to the alternatives. Sovereign said this itself._ "

Shepherd has it in her head that there's no way we can defeat the Reapers without giving up the mass effect relays and all the other Reaper tech that galactic civilisation is built on.

" _When, after everything that's happened, we still don't understand even the most basic workings of the Citadel, of the mass effect relays, of the very infrastructure of everything we've built around us, how can we keep putting our trust in it all? How can we keep acting as though these things are here to improve our lives, and not to undermine everything that we've created? The world is not that simple. If we're ever going to be rid of the Reapers, we're going to have to see the mass effect relays for what they really are: Drops of honey laid out across the galaxy to draw us in, to guide our first steps out into the universe, and to make sure they're our last._ "

I don't think that she sends any of these reports to the Illusive Man. Not any more.

I think she writes them for herself.

And now, every time I see a mass effect relay looming out of the darkness in front of me, I get that same itch.

_Your society develops along the paths that we desire._

Every time I ease off on the choke, and guide a ship into the sweet spot where the mass effect field will hit us, those two and a half seconds of darkness are sitting there waiting for me. Gnawing away at my mind.

Taunting me.

At some point, I started thinking that there was the mind of a Reaper living in that darkness: Shutting down the systems of every gunship, transport and freighter that's ever passed through the relay network--just for the space of a breath. Slipping into the ship's databanks like a hand into a glove.

And now I can't stop myself.

Every time a ship shuts down around me, I think about that darkness staring back at us. About everything the Reapers know: All of our secrets; our navigational data; our mission reports; shipping manifestos; and omni-tools, stuffed full of second-rate novels, and voice recordings, messages to loved ones, porn collections, and journals.

I think about the Reapers: Like the mind of the universe, thinking.

When Cerberus gave me back the _Normandy_ , I hoped that it'd stop that nagging itch in my skull.

It didn't.

In fact, if anything, it's made it worse.

Guess this ship is already so full of ghosts that one dead god didn't have much trouble getting in.

And so I just try not to think about it.

Try not to wonder what happens to EDI in that _still point_ , or about whether the mind of that dead god reaches out to her, as well.

The itch is still there.

It always will be.

It is a silent, nagging fear that is never going to go away.

It's the fear that Shepherd's right.

_One one-thousand... Two one-thousand... Three..._


End file.
